The Ministry of Public Infrastructure has identified land to construct a new entrance to the Diamond Housing Scheme after it had to cancel plans to construct a US$4.7 million overpass there because the road reserve was sold to a private individual under the previous PPP/C administration.
The ministry has decided to construct a new entrance, a car park and market, Minister of Public Infra-structure David Patterson said in a post on his Facebook page on February 10. He said that the project will be done in three phases. Phase I is for the construction of a market and taxi stand for which tenders have already been issued. Phase II, which will be tendered out soon, will see the extension of the road to First Avenue and beyond, while Phase three, which will be tendered out in the third quarter of this year, will be for the extension of the existing roads to the East Coast-East Bank bypass.
Patterson said that the ministry was able to access land with the help and cooperation of Demerara Distillers Limited.
Stabroek News reported in September 2017, that the ministry had cancelled plans to construct a US$4.7 million overpass at Diamond. Patterson had said at the time that the Inter-American Development Bank-funded project was designed to use the empty space at the junction of the entrance to Diamond Housing Scheme and the East Bank Highway, which was shown on the ministry’s plans as a road reserve.
“However, we were then informed that the road reserve was actually sold to a private individual under the previous administration. We had no option but to cancel the tender and project. We are working on an alternative site for another exit to Diamond,” he had said.
He noted that it’s not normal practice to sell reserves, since they are reserved for future expansion works, but could not say exactly when or by whom the sale was approved.
The vehicular overpass was proposed as a means to divert the approximately 20,000 vehicles using the Diamond, East Bank Demerara intersection every day, and thereby bring much needed relief to the congested road.
